Sea of Poppies: A Novel (The Ibis Trilogy)

by Amitav Ghosh

  ‘I asked you here, Mr Reid, because I wish to discover whether you are fit to bear the name you have been given: Zikri.’

  ‘I don’t take your meaning, Miss.’

  ‘May I then rappel for you, Mr Reid,’ said Paulette, ‘that a few nights ago you told me that if I ever needed anything, I had only to ask? I asked you here tonight because I wish to know whether your promise was a mere bagatelle, lightly uttered, or whether you are indeed a man who honours his parole.’

  Zachary could not help smiling. ‘You’re wrong there again, Miss: many a bar I’ve seen, but never those of a jail.’

  ‘Word,’ said Paulette, correcting herself. ‘That is what I mean. I want to know whether you are a man of your word. Come: tell the truth. Are you a man of your word or not?’

  ‘That depends, Miss Lambert,’ said Zachary cautiously, ‘on whether it’s in my power to give you what you want.’

  ‘It is,’ said Paulette firmly. ‘It most certainly is – or else I would not ask.’

  ‘What is it then?’ said Zachary, his suspicions deepening.

  Paulette looked him in the eye and smiled. ‘I would like to join the crew of the Ibis, Mr Reid.’

  ‘What?’ Zachary could not believe that he had heard aright: in that moment of inattention his grip slackened and the current tore the oars from his hands and would have swept them away but for the vigilance of Jodu, who snatched one from the water and used it to pole the other one in. Leaning over the gunwale to retrieve the oar, Zachary found himself exchanging glances with Jodu, who shook his head as if to indicate that he knew perfectly well what Paulette had in mind and had already decided that it could not be allowed. United by this secret understanding, each man took an oar for himself and they started to row together, sitting shoulder to shoulder, with their faces turned towards Paulette: no longer were they lascar and malum, but rather a confederacy of maleness, banding together to confront a determined and guileful adversary.

  ‘Yes, Mr Reid,’ Paulette repeated, ‘that is my request to you: to be allowed to join your crew. I will be one of them: my hair will be confined, my clothing will be as theirs . . . I am strong . . . I can work . . .’

  Zachary leant hard against the oar and the boat surged forward against the current, leaving the Burnham estate in its wake: he was glad to be rowing now, for there was a certain comfort in the hardness of the wooden handle that was grating against the calluses of his palms; there was something reassuring, even, about the dampness on his shoulder, where his arms were grinding against Jodu’s: the proximity, the feel and smell of sweat – these were all reminders of the relentless closeness of shipboard life, the coarseness and familiarity which made sailors as heedless as animals, thinking nothing of saying aloud, or even being seen to do, that which elsewhere would have caused agonies of shame. In the fo’c’sle lay all the filth and vileness and venery of being a man, and it was necessary that it be kept contained to spare the world the stench of the bilges.

  But Paulette, in the meanwhile, had not ceased to make her case: ‘. . . Nobody will know who I am, Mr Reid, except for yourself and Jodu. It is now only a matter of whether you will honour your word or not.’

  An answer could no longer be delayed, so Zachary replied by shaking his head. ‘You’ve got to put this out of your mind, Miss Lambert. It just won’t do.’

  ‘Why?’ she said defiantly. ‘Give me a reason.’

  ‘Can’t happen,’ said Zachary. ‘See: it’s not only that you’re a woman – it’s also that you’re white. The Ibis will be sailing with an all-lascar crew which means that only her officers will be “European”, as they say here. There are only three such: first mate, second mate and Captain. You’ve already met the Captain; and the first mate, let me tell you, is as mean a hard-horse as I’ve ever seen. This isn’t a kippage you’d want to be in, even if you were a man – and all the white berths are taken anyway. No room for another buckra on board.’

  Paulette laughed. ‘Oh but you don’t understand, Mr Reid,’ she said. ‘Of course I don’t expect to be an officer, like yourself. What I want is to join as a lascar, like Jodu.’

  ‘Shitten hell . . . !’ Once again Zachary’s grip went slack and this time the oar caught a wallop of a crab, dealing him a blow to the stomach that left him gasping and spluttering.

  Jodu tried to keep them on a steady course, but by the time Zachary recovered, the current had dragged them backwards and they were again within view of the Burnham estate – but Paulette was as oblivious to the sight of her former home as she was to the groans of pain issuing from the centre of the boat. ‘Yes, Mr Reid,’ she continued, ‘if only you agreed to help me, it could be quite easily done. Anything Jodu can do, I can do also – that has been true since we were children, he himself will tell you so. I can climb as well as he, I can swim and run better, and I can row almost as well. As for languages, I can speak Bengali and Hindusthani as well as he. It is true that he is darker, but I am not so pale that I could not be taken for an Indian. I assure you there has never been a time in our lives when we could not persuade an outsider that we were brothers – it was always just a question of changing my pinafore for a lungi, and tying a gamchha around my head. In this way we have been everywhere together, on the rivers and in the streets of the city: ask him – he cannot deny it. If he can be a lascar then, you may be sure, so can I. With kajal in my eyes, a turban on my head and a lungi around my waist, no one will know me. I will work below deck and never be seen.’

  An image of Paulette, dressed in a lungi and turban, flashed before Zachary’s eyes – it was so distasteful, so unnatural, that he shook his head to rid himself of it. It was hard enough to reconcile the girl in the sari with the Paulette who had invaded his dreams: the delicate rose he’d first met on the deck of the Ibis, with her face framed in a bonnet, and a spoondrift of lace bubbling at her throat. The sight of her had caught more than his eyes: that he might speak with her, walk out with her – he had wanted nothing more. But to think of that girl dressed in a sarong and headcloth, clinging barefoot to the ratlines, wolfing rice from a tapori and strutting the decks with the smell of garlic on her breath – that would be like imagining himself to be in love with a lascar; he would be like a man who’d gone sweet on an ape.

  ‘Miss Lambert,’ said Zachary firmly, ‘this notion of yours is just a smoke-sail: it’s never going to catch the least breath of wind. To start with, it’s our serang who does the ’gagement of the lascars, not us. He procures them through a ghaut-serang . . . and for all I know, there’s not a man among them who’s not his cousin or uncle or worse. I have no say in who he signs on: that’s for him to decide.’

  ‘But the serang took Jodu, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but it wasn’t on my say-so – it was because of the accident.’

  ‘But if Jodu spoke for me,’ said Paulette, ‘he would take me, would he not?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Glancing to his side, Zachary saw that Jodu’s face was screwed into an angry scowl: there could be no doubt that they were of one mind on this, so there was no reason not to let him speak for himself. ‘Have you asked Jodu what he thinks?’

  At this, a hissing sound issued from Jodu’s mouth and was followed by a succession of words and exclamations that left no doubt about where he stood – ‘Avast! . . . how she live beech-o-beech many mans? Don know hook from hinch . . . bumkin or wank . . .’ In a final rhetorical flourish, he posed the question: ‘Lady lascar? . . .’ – and answered by spitting over the deck rail, with a contemptuous: ‘Heave the lead!’

  ‘You must pay the dear little choute no attention,’ said Paulette quickly. ‘He is blablating because he is jealous and does not wish to admit that I can be just as good a sailor as he can. He likes to believe that I am his helpless little sister. Anyway it does not matter what he thinks, Mr Reid, because he will do as you tell him. It is all up to you, Mr Reid, not Jodu.’

  ‘Miss Lambert,’ said Zachary gently, ‘it was you as told me that he’s like a brother to you. Don’t
you see you’d be putting him in danger if you went through with this? What’d you think the other lascars would do to him if they knew he’d fooled them into taking a woman into the fo’c’sle? Many a sailor has been killed for less. And think, Miss Lambert, about what would be done to you if you were found out – and you surely would be, no mojo nor conjuration can stop it. When that happens, believe me, Miss, it would not be something that any of us would wish to think about.’

  All this while Paulette had been sitting proudly upright, but now her shoulders began to sag. ‘So you will not help me then?’ she said in a slow, halting voice. ‘Even though you gave your word?’

  ‘If I could help in some other way, I would be only too glad,’ said Zachary. ‘Why, I have some little money saved, Miss Lambert – it might be enough to buy a passage on another ship.’

  ‘It’s not your charity I want, Mr Reid,’ Paulette said. ‘Don’t you see that I must give proof of myself? Do you think a few little obstacles would have stopped my grand-aunt from making her voyage?’ Paulette’s lip trembled and swelled and she had to brush a tear of vexation from her eye. ‘I had thought you were a better man, Mr Reid, a man of your word, but I see that you are nothing but a paltry hommelette.’

  ‘An omelette?’

  ‘Yes; your word is not worth a dam.’

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Miss Lambert,’ said Zachary, ‘but I do believe it’s for the best. A clipper is no place for a girl like yourself.’

  ‘Oh, so that is it – a girl cannot do it?’ Paulette’s head snapped up and her eyes flashed. ‘To listen to you one would think you had invented hot water, Mr Reid. But you are wrong: I can do it and I will.’

  ‘I wish you good luck with that, Miss,’ said Zachary.

  ‘Don’t you dare sneer at me, Mr Reid,’ Paulette cried. ‘I may be in difficulties now but I will get to the Mauritius and when I do I will laugh in your face. I will call you names such as you have never heard.’

  ‘Really?’ With the end of the battle in sight, Zachary permitted himself a smile. ‘And what might they be, Miss?’

  ‘I will call you . . .’ Paulette broke off, searching her memory for an oath that would be insulting enough to express the anger in her heart. Suddenly a word exploded from her lips: ‘Cock-swain! That is what you are, Mr Reid – a horrid cock-swain!’

  ‘Cockswain?’ said Zachary, in puzzlement, and Jodu, glad to hear a familiar word, translated, as if by habit: Coksen?

  ‘Yes,’ said Paulette, in a voice that was tremulous with indignation. ‘Mrs Burnham says that it is a most unspeakable thing and should never be in a lady’s mouth. You may think the King is your cousin, Mr Reid, but let me tell you what you really are: an unutterable cock-swain.’

  Zachary was so taken by the absurdity of this that he burst out laughing and whispered, in an aside to Jodu: ‘Is it “dick-swain” she means?’

  ‘Dix?’ This exchange had not eluded Paulette. ‘A fine pair the two of you, cockson and dixon, neither one man enough to keep his word. But you wait and see – you’re not going to leave me behind.’

  Fourteen

  It was only to the outside world that Alipore Jail presented the semblance of a unitary realm: to its inmates, it appeared rather as an archipelago of fiefdoms, each with its own rules, rulers and ruled. Neel’s transition from the outer sphere of the prison, where the British authorities held sway, into the jail’s inner domain, took more than a day to complete: he spent his first night in a holding cell and it was not till the evening of the second day that he was assigned to a ward. By this time, he had been seized by a strange sense of dissociation, and even though he knew very little about the internal arrangements of the jail, he betrayed no surprise when his guards delivered him into the custody of another convict, a man who was also dressed in white dungaree cloth, except that his dhoti was of ankle length and his tunic was clean and well-washed. The man had the heavy build of an ageing wrestler and Neel was quick to notice the marks of eminence that he bore on his person: the wellfed surge of his belly, the trimmed grey beard and the massive ring of keys at his waist; when they walked past cells, the prisoners in-varably saluted him with deferential greetings, addressing him as Bishu-ji. It was clear that Bishu-ji was one of the prison’s jemadars – a convict who, by reason either of seniority, or force of character, or brute strength, had been appointed to a position of authority by the jail’s governors.

  The ward in which Neel now found himself was laid out around a square courtyard that had a well at one side and a tall neem tree at the other. This courtyard was where the ward’s inmates cooked, ate and bathed: at night they slept in shared cells and their mornings were spent working in labour gangs – but the courtyard was otherwise the centre of their lives, the hearth where their days ended and began. Now, the evening meal having been served and consumed, the cooking fires were dying out and the barred gates that ringed the courtyard were clanging loudly as each group of convicts was returned to its cell for the night. Of the men who remained, one lot were clustered around the well, where they were scrubbing cooking pots and other utensils; the others were the ward’s jemadars, and they were sitting at leisure under the neem tree, where four charpoys had been arranged in a circle. The jemadars were all attended by a few of their loyalists, for they each headed a band that was part gang and part family. Within these groupings, the jemadars functioned as both bosses and heads of household, and in much the way that zemindars were served by members of their zenanas, they too were waited on by their favourite chokras and followers. Now, at the end of the day, the overseers were taking their ease with their equals, while their attendants busied themselves in lighting their hookahs, preparing chillums of ganja and massaging their masters’ feet.

  What followed was not unlike a hearing at a meeting of village elders, with the particulars of Neel’s case being presented to the others by Bishu-ji. Speaking with the cogency of a lawyer, he told them about the Raskhali zemindary, the charge of forgery and the proceedings of the Supreme Court. How he had come by this information, Neel could not imagine, but he sensed that Bishu-ji wished him no harm and was grateful for his painstaking elaboration of the facts of his case.

  From the exclamations of shock that greeted the end of Bishu-ji’s recital, Neel understood that even among these long-term tenants of the jail, the penalty of transportation was regarded with an inexpressible horror. He was summoned to the centre of the gathering and made to display his tattooed forehead, which was examined with fascination and revulsion, sympathy and awe. Neel participated in the display without reluctance, hoping that the marks on his skin would entitle him to certain privileges, setting his lot apart from that of lesser convicts.

  Presently, a silence fell, to indicate that the deliberations of the panchayat had ended, and Bishu-ji signalled to Neel to follow him across the courtyard.

  Listen, he said, as they walked away, let me explain our rules to you: it is the custom here, when a new prisoner arrives, for him to be allotted to one or other of the jemadars, according to his origins and his character. But with someone such as yourself, this does not apply because the sentence you have been given will tear you forever from the ties that bind others. When you step on that ship, to go across the Black Water, you and your fellow transportees will become a brotherhood of your own: you will be your own village, your own family, your own caste. That is why it is the custom here for such men as you to live apart, in their own cells, separate from the rest.

  Neel nodded: I understand.

  At this time, continued Bishu-ji, there is only one other man here who bears the same sentence as you: he too is to be transported to Mareech, and the two of you will no doubt travel together. Therefore it is only right that you should share his cell.

  There was an undertone in his voice that sounded a warning. Neel said: Who is this man?

  Bishu-ji’s face creased into a smile: His name is Aafat.

  Aafat? said Neel, in surprise: the word meant ‘calamity’ and he could
not imagine that anyone would choose it for a name. Who is this man? Where is he from?

  He is from across the sea: the land of Maha-Chin.

  He is Chinese?

  So we think, from the look of him, said Bishu-ji. But it’s hard to be sure, for we know almost nothing about him, except that he is an afeemkhor.

  An addict? said Neel. But from where does he get his opium?

  That’s the thing, said the jemadar. He is an afeemkhor who has no opium.

  They had reached the cell now and Bishu-ji was sorting through his keys to find the right one. This corner of the courtyard was dimly lit, and the cell was so silent that at first glance, Neel had the impression that it was empty. He asked where the addict was and Bishu-ji answered by opening the gate to push him inside.

  He’s there; you’ll find him.

  Inside there were two charpoys, both covered with a webbing of rope, and in the far corner there was a toilet bucket with a wooden lid. By the wall there stood an earthen pitcher of drinking water: apart from these few things, the cell seemed to contain nothing else.

  But he’s not here, said Neel.

  He’s there, said the jemadar. Just listen.

  Gradually, Neel became aware of a whimpering sound, accompanied by a soft clicking, like the chattering of teeth. The sound was so close that its source had to be somewhere inside the cell: he dropped to his knees and looked under the charpoys, to discover an unmoving heap lying beneath one of them. He recoiled, more in fear than revulsion, as he might from an animal that was badly wounded or grievously sick – the creature was making a sound that was more like a whine than a moan, and all he could see of its face was a single glinting eye. Then Bishu-ji poked a stick through the bars and thrust it under the charpoy: Aafat! Come on out! Look, we’ve found you another transportee.